Zuora, which helps businesses handle subscription billing and forecasting, filed for an initial public offering this afternoon following on the heels of Dropbox’s filing earlier this month.

Zuora’s IPO may signal that Dropbox going public, and seeing a price range that while under its previous valuation seems relatively reasonable, may open the door for coming enterprise initial public offerings. Cloud security company Zscaler also made its debut earlier this week, with the stock doubling once it began trading on the Nasdaq. Zuora will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “ZUO.” Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo told The Information in October last year that it expected to go public this year.

Zuora’s numbers show some revenue growth, with its subscriptions services continue to grow. But its losses are a bit all over the place. While the costs for its subscription revenues is trending up, the costs for its professional services are also increasing dramatically, going from $6.2 million in Q4 2016 to $15.6 million in Q4 2017. The company had nearly $50 million in overall revenue in the fourth quarter last year, up from $30 million in Q4 2016.

But, as we can see, Zuora’s “professional services” revenue is an increasing share of the pie. In Q1 2016, professional services only amounted to 22% of Zuora’s revenue, and it’s up to 31% in the fourth quarter last year. It also accounts for a bigger share of Zuora’s costs of revenue, but it’s an area that it appears to be investing more.

Zuora’s core business revolves around helping companies with subscription businesses — like, say, Dropbox — better track their metrics like recurring revenue and retention rates. Zuora is riding a wave of enterprise companies finding traction within smaller teams as a free product and then graduating them into a subscription product as more and more people get on board. Eventually those companies hope to have a formal relationship with the company at a CIO level, and Zuora would hopefully grow up along with them.

Snap effectively opened the so-called “IPO window” in March last year, but both high-profile consumer IPOs — Blue Apron and Snap — have had significant issues since going public. While both consumer companies, it did spark a wave of enterprise IPOs looking to get out the door like Okta, Cardlytics, SailPoint and Aquantia. There have been other consumer IPOs like Stitch Fix, but for many firms, enterprise IPOs serve as the kinds of consistent returns with predictable revenue growth as they eventually march toward an IPO.

The filing says it will raise up to $100 million, but you can usually ignore that as it’s a placeholder. Zuora last raised $115 million in 2015, and was PitchBook data pegged the valuation at around $740 million, according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Benchmark Capital and Shasta Ventures are two big investors in the company, with Benchmark still owning around 11.1% of the company and Shasta Ventures owning 6.5%. CEO Tien Tzuo owns 10.2% of the company.

]]>31674Enterprise subscription services provider Zuora has filed for an IPO – TechCrunchhttp://startupanchor.com/enterprise-subscription-services-provider-zuora-has-filed-for-an-ipo-techcrunch-2/
Fri, 16 Mar 2018 21:07:13 +0000https://startupanchor.com/enterprise-subscription-services-provider-zuora-has-filed-for-an-ipo-techcrunch-2/Zuora, which helps businesses handle subscription billing and forecasting, filed for an initial public offering this afternoon following on the heels of Dropbox’s filing earlier this month. Zuora’s IPO may signal that Dropbox going public, and seeing a price range that while under its previous valuation seems relatively reasonable, may open the door for coming…

Zuora, which helps businesses handle subscription billing and forecasting, filed for an initial public offering this afternoon following on the heels of Dropbox’s filing earlier this month.

Zuora’s IPO may signal that Dropbox going public, and seeing a price range that while under its previous valuation seems relatively reasonable, may open the door for coming enterprise initial public offerings. Cloud security company Zscaler also made its debut earlier this week, with the stock doubling once it began trading on the Nasdaq. Zuora will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “ZUO.” Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo told The Information in October last year that it expected to go public this year.

Zuora’s numbers show some revenue growth, with its subscriptions services continue to grow. But its losses are a bit all over the place. While the costs for its subscription revenues is trending up, the costs for its professional services are also increasing dramatically, going from $6.2 million in Q4 2016 to $15.6 million in Q4 2017. The company had nearly $50 million in overall revenue in the fourth quarter last year, up from $30 million in Q4 2016.

But, as we can see, Zuora’s “professional services” revenue is an increasing share of the pie. In Q1 2016, professional services only amounted to 22% of Zuora’s revenue, and it’s up to 31% in the fourth quarter last year. It also accounts for a bigger share of Zuora’s costs of revenue, but it’s an area that it appears to be investing more.

Zuora’s core business revolves around helping companies with subscription businesses — like, say, Dropbox — better track their metrics like recurring revenue and retention rates. Zuora is riding a wave of enterprise companies finding traction within smaller teams as a free product and then graduating them into a subscription product as more and more people get on board. Eventually those companies hope to have a formal relationship with the company at a CIO level, and Zuora would hopefully grow up along with them.

Snap effectively opened the so-called “IPO window” in March last year, but both high-profile consumer IPOs — Blue Apron and Snap — have had significant issues since going public. While both consumer companies, it did spark a wave of enterprise IPOs looking to get out the door like Okta, Cardlytics, SailPoint and Aquantia. There have been other consumer IPOs like Stitch Fix, but for many firms, enterprise IPOs serve as the kinds of consistent returns with predictable revenue growth as they eventually march toward an IPO.

The filing says it will raise up to $100 million, but you can usually ignore that as it’s a placeholder. Zuora last raised $115 million in 2015, and was PitchBook data pegged the valuation at around $740 million, according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Benchmark Capital and Shasta Ventures are two big investors in the company, with Benchmark still owning around 11.1% of the company and Shasta Ventures owning 6.5%. CEO Tien Tzuo owns 10.2% of the company.

]]>31676Zscaler soars 106% on first day of trading – TechCrunchhttp://startupanchor.com/zscaler-soars-106-on-first-day-of-trading-techcrunch/
Fri, 16 Mar 2018 21:05:34 +0000http://startupanchor.com/zscaler-soars-106-on-first-day-of-trading-techcrunch/It was a big debut for enterprise cloud security company Zscaler, which saw its shares skyrocket 106% on its first day of trading. After pricing at $16, shares opened at $27.50, and closed at $34. This was also well above the original expected price range for its IPO of $10 to $12. The company ultimately raised…

It was a big debut for enterprise cloud security company Zscaler, which saw its shares skyrocket 106% on its first day of trading. After pricing at $16, shares opened at $27.50, and closed at $34.

This was also well above the original expected price range for its IPO of $10 to $12. The company ultimately raised $192 million. In other words, there was significantly better-than-expected demand for Zscaler.

But not everyone likes a big pop. This means the company could have technically sold shares for more and raised more money.

Zscaler works with enterprises and says it counts 200 of the Forbes Global 2000 companies as customers. In an interview with TechCrunch, CEO Jay Chaudhry described the business as “the platform which was built in the cloud for the cloud.”

He went on to explain that his business was designed to help companies stay secure with a transient workforce. “We want to work from a hotel, airplane, coffee shop,” said Chaudhry. “The data center is no longer the center of the universe.”

But Zscaler is not yet profitable. For its fiscal 2015, revenue was $53.7 million, 2016 grew to $80.3 million and 2017 saw $125.7 million. Net losses were $12.8 million, $27.4 million and $35.5 million in 2015, 2016 and 2017, respectively.

Zscaler listed on the Nasdaq, under the ticker, “ZS.”

TechCrunch broke the news that Zscaler filed for IPO last fall.

In just the second venture-backed tech IPO of the year, eyes are on Zscaler, which raised $148 million in capital from Lightspeed Venture Partners and TPG ahead of its IPO.

This was the fifth company started by founded by Chaudhry. His other four were acquired. He said that TPG was instrumental and helping the company get to this point.

The next venture-backed tech debuts will be Dropbox and Spotify, which are expected to list in the coming weeks.

]]>31672GrokStyle’s visual search tech makes it into IKEA’s Place AR app – TechCrunchhttp://startupanchor.com/grokstyles-visual-search-tech-makes-it-into-ikeas-place-ar-app-techcrunch/
Fri, 16 Mar 2018 18:35:49 +0000https://startupanchor.com/grokstyles-visual-search-tech-makes-it-into-ikeas-place-ar-app-techcrunch/GrokStyle’s simple concept of “point your camera at a chair (or lamp, or table…) and find others like it for sale” attracted $2 million in funding last year, and the company has been putting that cash to work. And remarkably for a company trying to break into the home furnishing market, it landed furniture goliath…

GrokStyle’s simple concept of “point your camera at a chair (or lamp, or table…) and find others like it for sale” attracted $2 million in funding last year, and the company has been putting that cash to work. And remarkably for a company trying to break into the home furnishing market, it landed furniture goliath IKEA as its first real customer; GrokStyle’s point-and-search functionality is being added to the IKEA Place AR app.

What GrokStyle does, in case you don’t remember, is identify any piece of furniture your camera can see — in your house, at a store, in a catalog — and immediately return similar pieces or even the exact one, with links to buy them.

I remember being skeptical last year that the product could possibly work as well as they said it did. But a demo shut my mouth real quick. The growing team is led by Sean Bell and Kavita Bala, who spun GrokStyle out of their work on computer vision at Cornell University — and it’s clear they know what they’re doing.

GrokStyle’s tech in action grabbing an image from a catalog.

IKEA thought so as well. In December, Bell and Bala got a chance to present it to Michael Valdsgaard, IKEA’s “Leader of Digital Transformation.” He loved it.

“He just said, ‘OK, this needs to be in the next release,’” recalled Bell, “and in 3 months we were able to turn it around for them.”

It seemed as clear to Valdsgaard as it is to GrokStyle that the advent of mixed reality in all its forms necessitates a fundamentally different kind of search. If information is to be presented and mixed visually, why shouldn’t you be able to find and browse things the same way?

“To make AR work, that’s where you really need tech like visual search,” said Bala. “It lets you find things, cool designs and furniture, all in situ and visualize it in place.”

What’s more, she noted, images and video are just how people communicate and record things now. “People take pictures of absolutely everything. If you want to remember someone’s phone number, sometimes you just take a picture of it. That’s the world we’re living in now.”

Being able to search among a visual record is a powerful tool, and one few companies have unlocked in any kind of powerful way. GrokStyle could very easily have overshot to begin with and tried to offer consumers an app that categorizes and searches among your photos and others, but that way lies great cost and questionable utility.

I originally thought that furniture was a rather prosaic and narrow field in which to deploy their obviously effective tech, but in fact it was a very wise choice. IKEA is a big get, but in the long term it’s the narrow end of a wedge.

“We’re also building recommendation systems and business intelligence tools,” Bala said. “Once you see what people are searching for, there are tons of opportunities.”

Imagine, for example, someone using GrokStyle’s tech while shopping at Crate and Barrel. They scan an item, see how it would look in their living room, then see a similar but slightly cheaper one available from a competitor. This is a critical moment in retail: the moment when Crate and Barrel and this other retailer compete for the consumer’s attention and money. Being at the center of that is a propitious position.

For now the plan is to execute on IKEA and get the knowledge out there that this exists and works well enough to be adopted by a major retailer. “We’re inviting retailers to come talk to us, and as part of working with them we’re setting up pilots and things,” said Bell. APIs are also in the offing.

As a sort of cherry on top of all this, the company also recently secured another $750K in grants from the National Science Foundations. GrokStyle had received $250K as part of the Small Business Innovation Research program, and successfully competed for the other three-quarters of a million up for grabs in Phase II. That ought to keep the lights on for a while.

]]>31668Village Global raises $100M seed scout fund from Zuck, Bezos… – TechCrunchhttp://startupanchor.com/village-global-raises-100m-seed-scout-fund-from-zuck-bezos-techcrunch/
Fri, 16 Mar 2018 17:02:07 +0000https://startupanchor.com/village-global-raises-100m-seed-scout-fund-from-zuck-bezos-techcrunch/It takes a village to grow a startup, so Village Global is offering access to a deep network of top tech execs to lure founders to its seed fund. Today, Village Global announced it’s raised $100 million for that fund that was first unveiled in September. In exchange for equity, portfolio companies get investment plus…

It takes a village to grow a startup, so Village Global is offering access to a deep network of top tech execs to lure founders to its seed fund. Today, Village Global announced it’s raised $100 million for that fund that was first unveiled in September.

Village Global also announced its 90-day intensive Network Catalyst program that sees the fund get more involved in developing a startup’s product and connections. It takes 7 percent for an $120,000 investment plus admission to the program. Erik Torenberg, Product Hunt’s first employee and a founding partner of Village Global tells me that with the program “Founders get a ‘brain trust’ assembled to fit their needs and to introduce talent, customers and investors.”

“I really think of Village Global as a co-founder at Keyo” says actual Keyo co-founder Kiran Bellubbi whose real estate startup we wrote about last week. “We’ve ideated, strategized and built this business from the ground up together in under 3 months. Couldn’t have done it without this team. The pace of play is astonishing.”

Newly announced LPs and mentors for Village Global include Fidelity’s Abby Johnson, Activision’s Bobby Kotick, 23andme’s Anne Wojcicki, and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert. The question is how much these mentors will actually engage with the portfolio companies instead of just being figureheads. The program reminds me of Jay-Z’s Tidal, which signed artists like Daft Punk and Jack White as owners, but only a few like Kanye have actually done much for the company. Reid Hoffman did recently sit down with Village Global companies, though, as seen above. Village Global’s other partners like LinkedIn’s Ben Casnocha, 500 Startups’ Adam Corey, Chegg’s Anne Dwane, and SuccessFactors’ Ross Fubini will have to keep the big-wigs present.

Most venture funds today have a slew of general partners searching for and leading deals. A few have expansive service arms like Andreessen Horowitz’s recruiting program or GV’s design assistance. But Village Global’s approach is to have just a few partners but a ton of scouts that earn a portion of the returns if they bring in a great startup. These “network leaders” include Quora vice president Sarah Smith and YouTube’s VR lead Erin Teague. Rather than connect them to more tangible services, portfolio companies get access to Village Global’s deep mentor bench.

Other big funds have their own scout programs too that Village Global will have to compete with. The Wall Street Journal reported that Accel Partners, Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Social Capital and Sequoia are among the top tier funds that use scouts to sniff out early stage deals. Others like First Round’s Dorm Room Fund and General Catalyst’s Rough Draft Ventures use student ambassadors on university campuses to identify high potential college startups.

It’s unclear whether letting younger, less experienced scouts write check is good for their funds or their own track records, and whether these scouts are shirking responsibilities from their own companies. But for founders, it means there are more people with their ears to the street who aren’t already famous finance big-shots. That could promote more meritocracy in an industry known for talking a lot about it despite tons of privilege given to founders of certain complexions or pedigrees.

With increased competition in the seed stage, funds can’t wait for founders to come to them any more.

]]>31666NexGenT wants to rethink bootcamps with programs for network engineering certifications – TechCrunchhttp://startupanchor.com/nexgent-wants-to-rethink-bootcamps-with-programs-for-network-engineering-certifications-techcrunch/
Fri, 16 Mar 2018 17:00:50 +0000https://startupanchor.com/nexgent-wants-to-rethink-bootcamps-with-programs-for-network-engineering-certifications-techcrunch/Developer bootcamps — several-month training programs that are designed to help people get up to speed with the technical skills they need to become a developer — exploded in popularity in the early part of the decade, but there’s been a bit of a shakedown on the space recently. And that could be a product…

Developer bootcamps — several-month training programs that are designed to help people get up to speed with the technical skills they need to become a developer — exploded in popularity in the early part of the decade, but there’s been a bit of a shakedown on the space recently.

And that could be a product of a lot of things, but for Jacob Hess and Terry Kim, it’s just not enough time to become a fully-fledged developer. With training in the Air Force, where both had to work on these kinds of compressed programs for entry-level technicians, both decided to try their own approach. The end result is NexGenT, which is own kind of bootcamp — but it’s for getting a certificate in network management, and not a one-size-fits-all sticker as a developer. That approach, which includes a 16-week class, is considerably more reasonable and helps get people industry-ready with a skill that’s teachable in that compressed period of time, Hess says. The company is launching out of Y Combinator’s winter class this year.

“There are 500,000 open IT jobs, but when you look at that number, what’s more interesting is so many of them are IT operation roles, and the remaining is software development,” Hess said. “The bigger pie in IT is non-software programming jobs. Cyber security is also huge because of the automation and AI. We want to create the stepping stone. Network engineering becomes a foundation for a lot of these jobs, whether you want to be a cloud architect and work for Amazon, it all starts with understanding and building a foundation around networking.”

The end result is a 16-week program where a batch of applicants gets a review, and a percentage of them are accepted into a cohort of students. They go through an engineering module, which teaches them the basics and mechanics of network engineering and learn about the IT industry. Students can go faster if they want — it’s primarily online — and then start working on labs where they are building their own lab, either physical or virtual. The process culminates in a project where the students have to roll out an HQ facility in two branch offices from design to technically implementing it.

The next phase is about getting them certifications for various technologies, which help them basically show that they are ready to start entering the workforce. Think of it as something similar to having a Github account where prospective employers can review the work, except the process is a lot more formalized and you end up with something concrete on the resume. The final phase is around career coaching and helping them get a job, which can last up to 6 months. Throughout this process, students have access to a mentor and live coaching where students can ask whatever questions they wish.

So, the process is not so dissimilar from the notion of a developer bootcamp. But at the same time, there’s a small-ish graveyard of developer bootcamps and some with issues. Galvanize in August said it would lay off around 11% of its staff, while Dev Bootcamp and Iron Yard shut down altogether. The knock on these camps is it’s hard to get developers ready to start shipping code in such a small period of time — but Kim argues that getting them certified and ready to be a network engineer is definitely something that’s doable in around 16 weeks.

“It’s more realistic,” Kim said. “For coding bootcamps, you have to go by off the portfolios and check their Github, and they have to pass that technical interview. In our world of IT operations, it’s not about the bachelor’s degree, it’s about the person having the knowledge. But the industry certifications come from third parties, and when they come out of our program and have two or three certifications. It’s enough to get into that entry-level job.”

It remains to be seen if this kind of an approach is going to work. NexGenT charges a tuition — around $12,000, which with maximum discounts hits around $6,500. The company offers a 36-month payment plan as well that comes with an enrollment fee, which stretches out that very steep ticket price. In reality, these zero-to-60 programs are designed to be for-profit, though there are some different models that take in a percentage of salary among other approaches. With that in mind, though, there’s always an opportunity to build a strong pipeline with certain companies, and if they can identify high-performing students they can offer more of a proof point and potentially use that as an opportunity to offer some variation of scholarship.

While this is more of a bootcamp-ish style program, there are already some IT certification programs through tools like Coursera. Google, in one instance, is offering financial aid for a batch of those students, and companies with deep pockets might be able to build out these kinds of pipeline programs on their own. Hess and Kim hope to offer some kind of high-touch approach, instead of just a class on a platform of many, that will give them an edge to be a preferred option.

]]>31670Small businesses love free stuff, so Gusto is giving them free HR Basics – TechCrunchhttp://startupanchor.com/small-businesses-love-free-stuff-so-gusto-is-giving-them-free-hr-basics-techcrunch/
Fri, 16 Mar 2018 16:32:53 +0000http://startupanchor.com/small-businesses-love-free-stuff-so-gusto-is-giving-them-free-hr-basics-techcrunch/Gusto, formerly ZenPayroll, is the rare startup unicorn that has stayed relatively mum on its product and growth — it’s last press release, for instance, was more than a year ago. The company’s core offering remains payroll for small businesses, and it has been working to expand its customer base across the nation, including have…

Gusto, formerly ZenPayroll, is the rare startup unicorn that has stayed relatively mum on its product and growth — it’s last press release, for instance, was more than a year ago. The company’s core offering remains payroll for small businesses, and it has been working to expand its customer base across the nation, including have its CEO, Joshua Reeves, go on a tour of the country to visit SMBs in an RV.

One challenge small businesses face though is getting access to high-quality, yet affordable software, particularly in HR. “Small businesses actually get that people are the core more than large companies,” Reeves explained to me. “In a ten person company, you know everyone, your customers are your neighbors, but they never really had access to high-quality software.”

Gusto is hoping to fill that gap, announcing the beta launch of a new product it’s calling HR Basics. The product offers a suite of tools for small businesses to handle the quotidian tasks of HR, including managing vacation time, compiling employee directories, and improving the onboarding of new hires. Most importantly, the product is free, and doesn’t require a credit card or a bank account to sign up.

Reeves believes that Gusto has two purposes: to offer “peace of mind” to small business owners around areas like compliance that can lead to negative enforcement actions, and to provide software that can help companies become “great places to work” that are more focused on community. Reeves is particularly passionate about the latter point. “Even the terminology ‘human capital management’ — humans are not capital, humans are not resources, they are people thank you very much.”

One particular area of focus for HR Basics is around onboarding. Gusto is hoping that it can move all HR paperwork online, so that everything required to officially onboard an employee can be done even before the employee walks into work the first day. With that out of the way, Gusto can then focus on helping companies create the right corporate culture. For instance, the product offers a “Welcome Wall” where other employees can write cheerful and encouraging notes for a new employee to make them feel like they belong at the company from day one.

The Welcome Wall is designed to encourage new employees joining a company

This new product is free for businesses, and Gusto obviously hopes that it creates a funnel of potential customers who will eventually sign up for its payroll service and full HR platform, which charge around $6-12 a month per employee based on the specific plan that a business chooses.

One interesting commitment Gusto is making according to Reeves is that an employee’s profile on the platform will be a lifetime account. If an employee moves from one company to the next and both use Gusto, all of the preferences and other data required to administer HR should work immediately.

That portability mattered less in a world where employees spent decades at a single company, but now that employees often switch employers as often as every year, the repeated savings of time in the transition can be quite significant. Longer term, Gusto sees that sort of portability as critical for facilitating the changing nature of work in the 21st century.

Gusto, which was founded in 2011, is now entering middle age, and the company has 530 employees across its San Francisco and Denver offices according to Reeves.

]]>316647 Insanely Simple Hacks to Crush Your To-Do Listhttp://startupanchor.com/7-insanely-simple-hacks-to-crush-your-to-do-list/
Fri, 16 Mar 2018 14:56:38 +0000http://startupanchor.com/7-insanely-simple-hacks-to-crush-your-to-do-list/Supercharge your productivity with these proven tips. March 16, 2018 7 min read Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Knowing which task to execute at what time is vital to improving productivity. In this digital age, where almost any distraction can make it to our desk, it imperative that we stay focused and…

Knowing which task to execute at what time is vital to improving productivity. In this digital age, where almost any distraction can make it to our desk, it imperative that we stay focused and energetic so that we tackle the goals we set out for ourselves.

Lists and copious amounts of caffeine won’t cut it. Here are my top seven productivity tips backed by science to help you structure your day to accomplish your top tasks in record time.

1. Use the Pareto Principle.

The Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule) states that 80 percent of your results will come from 20 percent of your efforts. If you focus only on the most value-producing activities on your list you will accomplish far more than if you have no focus and try to take on everything that makes it to your desk. You need to work smarter, not harder.

My best tip for taking advantage of the 80/20 rule is to write down all the tasks that you need to do that day and then ask yourself: “If I can only do one activity to push my life forward today, which one should I do?” Then repeat until you’ve circled two or three tasks. Those will be your most important tasks of the day. Everything else should be ignored until you’ve crossed out your top tasks.

Related: 7 Ways to Cultivate Your Inner Hacker

2. Sort your tasks with the Eisenhower decision matrix.

A powerful complement to the Pareto Principle is the Eisenhower decision matrix shown below.

(Image credit: James Clear)

This decision matrix was envisioned by the 34th president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower. With so many tasks and decisions to make, Eisenhower created a system to help him sort through the noise and allow him to focus.

The matrix divides tasks into four quadrants:

Tasks that are important and urgent which shall be done by you as soon as possible.

Tasks that are important but not urgent which shall be scheduled for a more appropriate time.

Tasks that are urgent but not important which shall be delegated to someone else.

And finally, tasks that are neither urgent nor important which can safely be purged.

The most productive people focus only on the top two quadrants.

3. Plan your day the night before.

Did you know that one of the main causes for lack of sleep or insomnia comes from thinking (or worrying) about what you have to do the next day? By jotting everything down before going to bed, you can have a clear mind when going to rest, allowing yourself to recover much better.

Moreover, when you go to sleep you can have your subconscious mind think about the problem and help you come up with a solution much faster (as reported by PsychologyToday). Plus, there’s no better feeling than waking up and knowing exactly what you should do that day right away.

Related: Want to Sleep Better? Find Your Purpose.

4. Learn to say no.

Whenever you write down your to-do list, you should verify that your written tasks are ones that you intended to do in the first place. If the majority of your list contains someone else’s priorities, you will get nowhere.

Once of the simplest ways to let unimportant and seemingly urgent tasks get on the way is to have your email inbox open. Rather than following a plan, you become reactive; and what seems to be a short email can take over your entire afternoon.

Unless absolutely necessary, I recommend scheduling a time to respond to emails. Pro tip: Use Unroll.me to compile all your subscriptions into one daily or weekly digest, or unsubscribe from all your mailing lists altogether.

Also, don’t fall into the trap of social media notifications. (The average person spends almost two hours on social media a day.) I suggest you install StayFocusd (Chrome Extension) to reduce this bad habit we all have. I have been off Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for months now and it feels great.

5. Work in sprints, and exercise.

A 1979 study stated that the brain can concentrate effectively for about 45 minutes before losing its focus. Rather than simply pushing through your day without any recess, it is advisable to refresh your energy bank every hour so that you can hit your next big task with a heightened alertness.

A good break can include a short walk around the office, switching to a low intensity, easy task or calling that friend that you’ve been meaning to. Exercise releases endorphins (those “feel-good” chemicals), helps us get rid of toxins, and can be a tremendous energy booster. An added benefit of this is that you will also be adding quality years to your life, getting less sick and feeling great overall.

6. Eat and train like a top athlete.

I respect and look up to professional athletes. They not only care about their performance on the court but also design their external lives so that they can perform at their peak every time.

Here’s how you can become world-class at what you do: Eat and drink smart. Being hungry or thirsty is a productivity killer. Notice how Google, Facebook and other tech companies make sure their employees are well-fed at all times.

Use the physiology of your body to your advantage and learn how to manage your “energy bank.” For instance, more often that not, when you feel tired or sluggish it is probably due to dehydration.

Related: 5 All-Natural Ways to Boost Energy, Fast

Work on your work the way athletes constantly practice and strengthen their weak spots. You too must work on your abilities so that you can get better at what you do.

If you are an accountant, become really good at Quickbooks, learn all the keyboard shortcuts, know how to produce reports on the fly, etc. You have to practice your craft to become the best at it.

7. Defer, delete or delegate tasks.

Even with the most advanced productivity hacks, truth is, you won’t be able to accomplish your entire to-do list. If you are, then your list is just too short or too easy. Remember the bottom two quadrants of the Eisenhower matrix I mentioned before? Now, I’ll show you how to tackle those tasks.

A key part of being productive is knowing the tasks that you are most qualified to do. Carefully define the tasks you’re good at and leave the rest to your team. You will also find that hiring a VA (Virtual Assistant) will help you free up your time and liberate you from the stress of doing small menial tasks. You can find VAs on Upwork, Fiverr or OnlineJobs.ph.

Ultimately, being productive is a combination of the following:

Focusing on the right tasks

Planning the tasks out carefully

Designing your life and environment in a way that allows you to tackle the tasks at your peak energy levels

Those are all the tips I know to help you become the most productive person around. Try them out for a month, and you will see tremendous results in your life.

]]>31663The Downside of Greed: 90% of Nothing Is Nothinghttp://startupanchor.com/the-downside-of-greed-90-of-nothing-is-nothing/
Fri, 16 Mar 2018 12:54:34 +0000http://startupanchor.com/the-downside-of-greed-90-of-nothing-is-nothing/If you focus on making a bigger pie you don’t have to worry about the size of your slice. Read the Original ArticleSource link

]]>31662Detectify raises €5M for its crowdsourced website vulnerability scanner – TechCrunchhttp://startupanchor.com/detectify-raises-e5m-for-its-crowdsourced-website-vulnerability-scanner-techcrunch/
Fri, 16 Mar 2018 10:55:33 +0000http://startupanchor.com/detectify-raises-e5m-for-its-crowdsourced-website-vulnerability-scanner-techcrunch/Sweden-based Detectify, which offers a website vulnerability scanner that is in part powered by the crowd, has raised €5 million in new funding. The round was led by New York-based venture capital and private equity firm, Insight Venture Partners. Existing investors, Paua Ventures and Inventure, also participated. Founded in late 2013 by a self-described group…

Sweden-based Detectify, which offers a website vulnerability scanner that is in part powered by the crowd, has raised €5 million in new funding. The round was led by New York-based venture capital and private equity firm, Insight Venture Partners. Existing investors, Paua Ventures and Inventure, also participated.

Founded in late 2013 by a self-described group of “white-hat hackers” from Sweden, the now 20-person strong company offers a website security tool that uses automation to scan websites for vulnerabilities to help customers (including developers) stay on top of security. The more unique part of the service, however, is that it is in part maintained — or, rather, kept up to date — via the crowd in the form of Detectify’s ethical hacker network.

This sees top-ranked security researchers submit vulnerabilities that are then built into the Detectify scanner and used in customers’ security tests. The really clever part is that researchers get paid every time their submitted module identifies a vulnerability on a customer’s website. In other words, incentives are always kept aligned, giving Detectify a potential advantage and greater scale compared to similar website security automation tools.

“Companies are building applications and users happily enter their data into these applications, but the applications are built from mix of technologies that are changing rapidly (open source, plugins, funky js-frameworks), without a clear vendor “responsible” for the security,” says Detectify co-founder and CEO Rickard Carlsson, explaining the problem the startup set out to solve.

“As no clear vendor is responsible for communicating about security [as compared to a Windows patch, for example], the knowledge sits in the community. We wanted to build a platform that takes the knowledge from white-hat and supercharges it with automation”.

Put more simply, developers typically have a long backlog of things to do and security testing often “falls between the cracks” because of limited time. It’s also near-impossible for any single developer to manually security test their code while keeping up with the latest vulnerabilities. By using automation, the wisdom of the crowd, and via integrations with popular developer tools, Detectify aims to help catch security issues before every new release and as part of a developer’s normal workflow.

To that end, Detectify already counts customers spanning a range of industries and company sizes, including Trello, Le Monde, and King. “It might have been easier to target a specific segment but we have a land and expand strategy. We also aim to make the internet a safer place, hence we want to offer our solution to organisations of all sizes,” says Carlsson.

Meanwhile, he does concede that automated vulnerability scanning tools aren’t new, but says one key difference is that the Detectify team comes from the world of ethical hacking instead of the world of compliance. “Our tool offers a great UI/UX, high-quality results and the latest security tests thanks to our crowdsourcing,” he adds.